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| Jan and Sylvia Soska. |
Twenty nine year old Jen and Sylvia Soska are identical
twins from Canada who are known professionally as the Soska Sisters. They are
film directors, producers, screenwriters and actors and it was
after attending film school that they decided to make a short film in the style
of a Rodriguez and Tarantino Grindhouse trailer, which, at the time, was showing
in cinemas. The title of that trailer was Dead Hooker In A Trunk, which was made
into their debut film in 2009. Performing the stunts the twins also wrote,
directed, produced, and starred in the film, referring to themselves as ‘rebels
without a budget’. The cast and crew for this exploitation movie included friends
and relations and took five years from conception to finally screening for a
budget of $2500!
Set in a very modern day Vancouver, Dead Hooker In A Trunk involves Geek,
(Jan Soska), her twin sister Badass (Sylvia Soska), there friend Junkie (Rikki
Gagne) who set out to pick up Geek’s boyfriend Goody Two Shoes (C J Wallis) from
his Christian youth club but end up in a gruesome bloody battle for survival
when they discover the body of a prostitute in the boot of their car!
The film has been embraced by horror fans, reviewers,
and filmmakers and has become an underground sensation being called "a hidden gem in indie film making and a cult
classic in waiting[1]".
The film was successfully shown at numerous film festivals where it won
multiple awards. Both the film and the Soska Sisters caught the attention of
director Eli Roth, best known for Hostel
(2005) and Hostel Part 2 (2007) and
for appearing in Inglourious
Basterds (2009) as Donny ‘The Bear Jew’ Donowitz, who praises both the film
and the Twins by saying "you should check out the Soska sisters, who
made a film called Dead Hooker In A Trunk. They made it low budget and it's
fucking awesome. It's really violent and the stunts are superb. They are two
Canadian twin sisters who made a feature that they wrote, produced, directed,
and starred in. And it's fantastic."
This punk rock anarchic film is at the same time edgy,
disturbing, funny, bloody and sexy, with loads of fun for devotees of gore and
horror, and your be pleased to know, according to the end credits, that ‘no
hookers were harmed during the principal photography of the feature film
production’
In 2008, the
twins incorporated their company, giving it the name Twisted Twins Productions.
Their second feature film, having secured a far bigger budget, enabled the
sisters a sizable production, cast and crew, and was filmed in Vancouver in
just 15 days. American Mary (2012) is a fictionalized look at the real word
of the body modification community and involves a student surgeon, Doctor Mary
Mason, who desperately needs money to enable her to finish her studies. To this
end she accepts $5000 from a local strip club owner to patch up the horrendous
injuries of a mobster. When she is approached by Beatress Johnson (Tristan
Risk), who has had plastic surgery to make her resemble Betty Boop, and offered
$12000 to perform some extreme body modification on her friend, Mary excepts
and realises there is money to be made from assisting the EBM community. Subsequently
her college lecturer violently rapes her, how will she extract revenge?
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| Doctor Mary Mason. |
Where as their debut film was a love letter to
grindhouse, this second film is homage to Asian films like Takashi
Miike’s Audition (1999)
and Ichi the Killer (2001) but also incorporates
influences from films like American Psycho
(2000) and Eyes Without a Face (1960).
It’s premier took place as part of the Film 4 Frightfest Festival at the Empire
Leicester Square in London. Jan and Sylvia, who were in England for the first
time, attended the showing. The Twins in a Q&A that followed the film told
an attentive audience that the humour found in their film is more British than
American or Canadian and that they both felt an affinity with society’s
outcasts including the body modification community, some of which can be seen
in film.
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| Beatress Johnson (Tristan Risk) |
The awesome craziness that is American Mary is dark, sexy and graphic mixed with the sister’s trademark
humour and highlights the acting abilities of the very attractive Katharine
Isabelle (Ginger Snaps 2000) who
plays Mary Mason. The martial acts trained twins appear as a couple of deranged
Germans from Berlin who commission Doctor Mary to remove their left arms and
sew them on to each other’s bodies. They are dressed in identical gothic attire
with their backs pierced with holes and laces inserted. (I actually saw this
for real at the Tattoo Convention in Carlisle a couple of years ago!) They lie
side by side holding hands and grinning, exposing their filled teeth!
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| The deranged German Twins from Berlin. |
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